Publication Date: Friday, April 01, 2005
ReaderWire
ReaderWire
(April 01, 2005)
Time to get to work
The ballots on the storm-drain upgrade proposal will be mailed to affected homeowners April 4.
To refresh your memory on the details, go to the City of Palo Alto's Web site for an excellent description of the proposed project.
I'm a retired engineer. I've had the opportunity to hear the engineering staff discuss the difficulties with our existing storm-drain sewer system. I felt very comfortable with their description and analysis of the problems and their recommendations for the necessary fixes.
Just as we maintain our cars, houses and other personal effects, I feel that it's essential that we maintain the quality of our city infrastructure and services. We're fortunate to have a capable and responsible Public Works Department and Engineering Division to specify and oversee the work of contractors who will perform the construction.
I'll cheerfully pay the modest assessment fee and hope that the city will begin work as soon as possible.
Charles Shoens
Talisman Drive, Palo Alto
No vote is a "yes" vote
The storm-drain ballots will be mailed to all Palo Alto property owners on April 4. You will be asked to approve a storm-drain fee increase on your utility bill from $4.25 to $10 per month.
At the council's discretion, the fee can be increased every year for 12 years by the consumer price index or 6 percent, whichever is lower. This could increase the fee to $19 per month.
A ballot against the storm-drain fee increase must be returned to the city or it will not be counted. If you don't want the fee increase and simply throw your ballot away, that will be a vote in favor of the increase because it won't be registered as a "no" vote.
Please fill out your ballot in accordance with the city's instructions and mail it back to the city so it reaches them by 5:30 p.m. on April 26.
Jean Wilcox
Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto
Raising the drawbridges
What a wretched piece of journalism the Weekly published in its March 30 issue ("Traffic-calming test ahead for Barron Park"). To suggest, as the intern writer did, that Barron Park residents are beseeching the city to send in the cement trucks and pave over our roadsides is ludicrous.
Should that happen I assure you the moats will be dug on El Camino Real and the drawbridges will be pulled up. It appears that the journalist interviewed and quoted just one resident and then generalized this as an expression of the wishes of the entire neighborhood.
This is about as far from the truth as one can get.
Barron Park is by and large a dead-end destination, an enclave where you can't drive through to get anywhere else. And that's how we want it to be -- without sidewalks. The agreement of not having sidewalks in Barron Park was a turning point in the yes vote of our community to annex to the City of Palo Alto in the mid-'70s.
I remember the election and the community debates vividly. The promise made to us by the city was a solemn one, to leave the character of our neighborhood as it was and as it is.
This same promise has surfaced again in the lively and animated discussions about the attempts by the city to prevent someone in our neighborhood from bringing their sheep, and maybe even our community donkeys, to graze in Bol Park.
Art Liberman
Chimalus Drive, Palo Alto
Federal faux-pas
I am concerned about the attempt by the White House to load the Federal Courts with unqualified candidates. One such candidate is William Myers III, who has never been a judge and has spent most of his career as a lobbyist.
A second candidate is Terrence Boyle, whose signature decision as a judge was to attempt to circumvent federal laws barring employment discrimination by race, gender and disability. A third candidate, William Pryor, Jr., served as Attorney General of Alabama, where he took money from Phillip Morris and fought against the anti-tobacco lawsuit, costing Alabama billions of dollars.
The fourth candidate, William Haynes III, the chief legal council for the Defense Department, championed the legal doctrine that led to the torture at Abu Ghraib.
We do not want these candidates serving in our Federal Courts, where judges are supposed to follow the laws, not circumvent them.
Kendric C. Smith
Mears Court, Stanford
Evil and stupid
Would you call the humane society if a neighbor's property had pens with dogs lying in their own filth? If dogs cowered listlessly by the fence of the dog-run because their legs were tethered so they couldn't walk without pain? If lights and noises all night prevented the poor animals from sleeping? If they were cruelly prodded for sport?
Why are we not outraged at the conditions at Guantanamo, where human prisoners have been warehoused in similar conditions for three years? The FBI's opinion is that coercion is not the way to get good intelligence. One agent's opinion: "It's evil, but it's also stupid."
It's evil: It's immoral. This behavior dishonors all Americans. It's stupid: It makes terrorist recruitment easier. It hardens the hearts of Middle Eastern regimes against wishes of America for oil production.
The army let 17 soldiers off the hook for the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan this week. It should prosecute them, and higher-ups for the policy as well.
Gertrude Reagan
Moreno Avenue, Palo Alto
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